22 - Post-colonial Christianity in Africa

Summary

Introduction: setting the scene

The 1950s and 1960s witnessed nationalist movements bringing the majority of sub-Saharan Africa to political independence. The Portuguese colonies and Rhodesia stemmed the process for a decade or longer but by 1994 and the fall of apartheid in South Africa the entire African continent was under black majority rule. Many observers in the 1960s would not have rated the prospects of the mission-derived churches particularly highly. At worst the mission churches had appeared implicated in colonialism, at best their stance had been ambiguous. Most missionaries feared that a successful nationalism would promote either a revived paganism or communism, or both, and hence shunned it. They had schooled the first generation of African nationalist leaders and helped create a modernising African elite but as agents of cultural imperialism had simultaneously disparaged African culture. Nationalists had sought to remedy this by seizing control of missionary education at independence. And given that schools were so central to missionary strategy it seemed likely that mission churches would decline in the new African states. If anything Christianity’s future looked brightest with the so-called African Independent churches (AICs).

Yet Christianity’s African future turned out to be far from bleak. Since independence the growth in Christian adherence has been phenomenal. (For the strength of Christianity in different countries, see map 22.1.) Whereas the total number of African Christians stood at approximately 75 million in 1965, by 2000 it had risen to approximately 351 million.